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Peak performance
Regardless if you are a professional athlete, or simply want to achieve your very own best at your chosen sport, neurotherapy can assist you reach new amounts of performance, not just for a few fleeting moments, but more frequently, and for longer periods, than you’ve ever experienced before.

neurofeedback peak performance
The Italian soccer team recently discovered this when they focused on retraining their thinking by using neurofeedback, along with guided imagery and other cognitive restructuring techniques, in the glassed-in room that became referred to as “mind room.” Their usage of these training methods drew much media attention when they won the World Cup in the year 2006, largely, it is believed, due to neurofeedback therapy.

neurofeedback for peak performance
Neurofeedback was instrumental in assisting these athletes to free themselves from your stress and anxiety produced by self-criticism and by replaying past failures. Many athletes use positive imagery and visualization to center their focus on the desired outcome. Still, it’s really a struggle to keep the mind from groing through mistakes, in effect reinforcing them, and perhaps causing a repetition of the regretted performance.

Neurofeedback therapy goes further than positive imagery. A device receives feedback in the athlete’s brain waves and “rewards” the brain for optimal performance, and removes the reward when the brain wave readings show an elevated stress level (which might be caused by pondering past failures).

In the “mind room,” the soccer players select the reward of making an animated robot using the pc monitor run, only using their brain waves. After this exercise, the players would compare the speeds that they had each achieved with all the robot. They discovered that it was impossible to help make the robot run faster by consciously wanting to, but only by relaxing the mind until the desired brain waves were attained.

The importance of performing in a relaxed state may be especially obvious during a major event including the Olympic games. Athletes who aren’t expected to win a medal and so are just happy to exist will happily tell interviewers they just plan to benefit from the experience and do their utmost. Often, these performers will surprise everyone by winning a place on the podium.

Conversely, once the pressure is on to bring home the gold, athletes will most likely disappoint themselves by making unexpected mistakes that cost them the medal they dream of. Such was the heartbreaking case for figure skater Michelle Kwan in 2002, when everyone’s hopes did actually rest on her to win the gold in the long program, but it went, instead, to relative newcomer Sarah Hughes, and Michelle won the bronze. But during the closing exhibition, if the pressure was off, Michelle delivered an exquisite and flawless performance of the same routine. Few who watched her skate so elegantly to the song “Fields of Gold” occasion to forget it.

Neurofeedback helps performers gain treatments for the emotions that cause this kind of frustrating scenario, also to reach that condition of heightened intuition, creativity, and energy known as “flow” when they require it the most.
Neurofeedback has been used in clinical situations for more than 30 years, but, just like any new development, it has taken time to overcome prejudices against it. True to life experiences such as the Italian soccer team’s famous win have helped to get rid of doubts and open just how for not only athletes, but also musicians, artists, and others to reach new heights of creativity and power within their performances.